


power play

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [29]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Q is as troublesome as it's possible for an artificial intelligence to be while not actually bordering on consciousness, but Athena wouldn't change him for the world.





	power play

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 1, Day 4 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was "Absentees".

 

“Hello, Doctor Morrow,” said Q, pleasantly, as soon as Athena arrived outside her lab. He spoke to her through the little security scanner, fixed at eye level on the closed door.

“Hello, Q,” said Athena, scanning her ID badge to unlock the door. Nothing happened. She wiped a finger over the sensor to clean off any dust, and scanned it again. Still nothing. “I can’t get in,” she tells the computer. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“I know ever such a lot of things,” Q remarked. “It’s hard to keep track.”

“Yes,” said Athena, pointedly. “That’s why we’re trying to get you more storage, remember? But you have to let me in so I can work, or we won’t get any grants like that.”

“I know ever such a lot of things,” the computer repeated.

Athena put some more gush into her voice, hoping to trigger Q’s “flatter” algorithm. “Yes, you’re _very_ smart, Q. We’re really proud of how smart you are. And it’s great that you’ve worked out how to lock the door.”

“Thank you. You can’t get in if I lock the door, can you, Doctor Morrow?”

“No, that’s right, I can’t.”

“You have to stay out there.”

“I’m entirely at your mercy, Q,” Athena said, humbly. It wasn’t true, of course - she could disable him remotely from anywhere else in the building, but it was important to expose Q to as many emotion-logic paradigms as possible, and being in a position of power was new for him. It might be interesting to see how he chose to proceed, even though all his choices were based on programming, not the true intelligence she was supposedly working towards.

Q was becoming more important every day. R and T had deleted themselves within hours of each other. S very rarely chose to speak to anyone, and U was convinced he was a fridge. If Athena couldn’t keep Q looking like progress, V would seem too much of an outlier, a suspicious leap forward that would have to be accounted for. Athena hadn’t planned out 21 progressions toward her daughter’s initial just to have her cover blown.

So no matter how his penchant for mischief grew, no matter how much space his addled mind took up, and no matter what her engineers suggested, she wasn’t going to delete Q.

She could humour him, though. “Please let me into the lab. I’ll get lonely out here.” She paused. “You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Q considered the question. He did have a few pages of code that simulated the desire to choose certain activities over others, but his choices were really just random selections, and when asked to explain why he wanted a certain thing, he usually stated an unrelated fact. (“Q, why did you change all our desktop backgrounds to a fuchsia-lime gradient?” “Because the capital of Hungary is Budapest.”) If his reasons were challenged, he just said that human desire seemed nonsensical from his standpoint, so he didn’t see why he should try and be any more logical than they were, when emulating it.

“I wouldn’t gain from you being lonely,” Q observed. “You are my creator and my provider, so it would be arbitrary to continue in a course of action against you, unless it would result in gain for myself.”

Athena acknowledged the logic of that.

“Then again, all desire is arbitrary. Perhaps I’ll let you stay out there for a while, because the river otter has denser fur than any other mammal.”

She sighed. “Anything you say.”

She decided to give him a few more minutes of delusion before freezing him out from one of the other labs. He didn’t have the capacity to enjoy things, really, but she would be able to make her report sound like he was getting there, which would give more credence to V - who would hopefully start recovering her natural likes and dislikes soon - being a manufactured consciousness like he was.

To pass some time, Athena got her phone out of her jacket pocket and scrolled through a news app. A story caught her eye about a man-hunt for a brothel synth in Britain, who’d supposedly killed a punter, then gone on to wreak havoc in a smash club. Athena clicked the link to read the full article, though she was sure events were being exaggerated. Underground places like brothels and smash clubs were always fitting bad mods, sometimes on models whose codes were corrupt in the first place. Accidents happened when you didn’t take the proper precautions. One misaligned pressure resonator sent the wrong message to the head, and bam! You were strangled instead of aroused. That was why you didn’t go messing around in synths’ heads unless you really knew what you were doing.

“Are you lonely yet, Doctor Morrow?” Q asked, apparently confused by her sudden lack of interest in him.

Athena looked up. “Oh, yes,” she said, hastily. “Very lonely.”

“I’ve decided to let you in,” said Q, benevolently.

“Thank you,” said Athena, scanning her ID.

“I didn’t want you to be lonely,” he added, as the door opened.

“That’s kind of you.”

“Because a grizzly bear can strip a deer carcass in six minutes.”

Athena booted up her own computer, an amused smile on her face. No, they couldn’t delete Q. Quite apart from protecting V, he would be missed in his own right.

 


End file.
